Robyn Rosen

Mitzvah Day, the nationwide volunteer initiative where Jews across the religious spectrum give their time to help others, will be “bigger and better” this year, its founder promises.

Laura Marks expects to build on last year’s 10,000 participants and 85 partner organisations for the 2009 Mitzvah Day on November 15, for which the www.mitzvahday.org.uk website has now been launched. This year, she anticipates the involvement of 15,000 people and 130 communities from across the UK.

The former Conservative leader Michael Howard and the Labour MP Frank Field, a former minister, have been appointed as part of a “reinvigoration” of the trustees board at the Council of Christians and Jews (CCJ).

The new appointments are part of an attempt to bring in influential characters who can increase the impact and reach of the CCJ, which aims to promote religious and cultural understanding between the two faiths.

The 18-year-old King Solomon High pupil who commutes from Hendon to the Redbridge school recorded As in A-level maths, physics, chemistry and modern Hebrew, plus As in AS biology, further maths and Spanish.

JFS has reported its best-ever A-level results with 78 of its 226 pupils achieving three or more A grades.

“Results of this calibre owe much to excellent and highly focused teaching, our outstanding home–school relationships and the caring guidance and support every student receives,” JFS head Jonathan Miller said.

Early GCSE results included a perfect performance from students at the London Jewish Cultural Centre in Golders Green, who all achieved A-star standard in Jewish studies.

Education manager Judy Trotter was “absolutely thrilled. Some took the exam early so it is great news. I saw how hard these kids worked and how nervous they were beforehand so it’s not fair to say exams are getting easier.”

Some people always have a “glass is half empty” attitude. So when stocks of the famously sweet kiddush wine, Palwin, appeared to have run low at supermarkets across the country, frantic customers contacted the JC, worried that Palwin had closed down.

More than 100,000 bottles of Palwin wine are produced every year by the Israeli winery, Carmel, solely for the British market, but customers have reported a shortage in recent months.

Jewish Care is experiencing a massive upsurge in job applications as the recession forces more people back on to the employment market.

The health and social care charity claims a 1,600 per cent increase in responses from job seekers.
Recruitment drives normally attract 100 to 200 applications. This year, there have been 2,000 inquiries for 43 positions in the care sector.

Jewish Care director of human resources Diane Blausten has been overwhelmed by the interest. “We have been inundated with inquiries and have received some very high calibre applications,” she reported.

A row has broken out after a senior Reform rabbi publicly attacked two high-profile Progressive colleagues over comments made about Israel.

Rabbi Steven Katz, senior minister at Hendon Reform Synagogue, spoke out after the JC published the opinions of prominent British Jews on the visit of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to Britain later this month.

Ivan Lewis, the Middle East minister, has asked the Palestinian leadership for help in securing the release of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

Making his first visit to Israel and the territories since taking up his Foreign Office post in June, Mr Lewis spent four days in the region. The trip followed a visit to Syria and Lebanon earlier this month.

Mr Lewis, MP for Bury South, a former vice-chairman of Labour Friends of Israel and chief executive of the Manchester Jewish Federation, said his aim was to help realise the goal of a two-state solution.

The Agudas Israel Housing Association is celebrating the defeat of a legal challenge to a building project for Orthodox families in Stamford Hill.

In the High Court last Friday, Mr Justice Duncan Ouseley rejected an application from local residents for a judicial review of Hackney Council’s approval of plans to redevelop the former Avigdor School site in Lordship Road into a special needs school and 29 residential units.

A British charity worker has just returned from setting up a scheme to help unemployed Jews in poverty-torn Moldova.

World Jewish Relief programmes manager Cassie Williams said the Golders Green-based charity has pledged £50,000 over the next year to help single Jewish women improve both their job prospects and confidence.

Amnesty International says it has withdrawn its support from a concert in Israel because it did not receive sufficiently widespread support from Israelis and Palestinians.

Organisers of the Leonard Cohen concert, which sold out in a day and is due to take place in Tel Aviv next month, approached the US branch of the human rights charity to set up a fund which could distribute the profits of the concert to Israeli and Palestinian charities.

An online comedy about a group of Muslim suicide bombers in Britain could cause “gratuitous offence”, the chief executive of the Board of Deputies has warned.

Living with the Infidels, a sitcom which was launched on the web on Thursday, centres on a Bradford-based terror cell who are “set on a path to martyrdom” but are tempted by football, the pub and busty women.

The production company, The System Predicts, led by film-maker Aasaf Ainapore, claim the series has been made with the support of a senior, though unnamed, member of the Muslim Council of Britain.